Pinnacle
The oligarchic society set in the dilapidated husk of what is now one of the few skyscrapers left standing in the heart of Nashville is a place of bigotry, racism and Cold War-esque scenes. The mutants, on one side of the edifice, hate the humans and the humans, on the other side, despise the mutants and their 'barbaric' cult. When you're new, make sure you're going through the right door if you don't want to get shot in the head. History Pre-War The Pinnacle at Symphony Place officially opened on February 10, 2010, and was a 29 story, 417 feet office and retail skyscraper in Nashville, in the city's SoBro district. It was located across the street from the Schermerhorn Symphony Center. The building featured a green roof over the parking garage and a water recycling system, among other environmentally-friendly amenities. It was the home of a variety of businesses and organizations until a tornado shattered hundreds of the building's enormous windows and trashed its rooftop. The building remained under construction for the next decade or so. In the years of the Chinese occupation of Anchorage and imminent all-out nuclear war, the Pinnacle, along with other trademark structures in the city, was given special attention during its reconstruction. Most importantly, the important underground support beams that prevented the building from falling over were reinforced along with several of the subterranean levels in the hope to safeguard the expensive Pinnacle during a hostile attack. The War Most of the nuclear bombs hit the city's center, far away from the tower. Surrounded by other, almost equally tall skyscrapers, and thanks to a large quantity of sheer luck, the Pinnacle survived largely intact, but the underground levels became inaccessible as some of the tower's supports were destroyed by earthquakes and rubble. Aftershocks and flooding further pressured the already battered support beams, almost until the point where the building would no longer be able to evade the fate of its fellow giants and topple. Post-War The tower lay ruined and forgotten for many decades. Thanks to some bit of luck, though, the support beams did not break completely and the Pinnacle remained standing. It was in this period, that all kinds of strange noises and loud bangs could be heard inside, coming from the underground levels where the support beams were constantly stretched to their limits as the skyscraper swayed in the winds.. The few who entered the ruined structure either recognized the sounds as an impending hazard or thought it was haunted by ghosts, and so these people always moved on quickly. It wasn't until 2250 that the place was settled properly. A small caravan composed of ghouls, lead by a Super Mutant who went by the name of Grutt, entered the ruins of Nashville one day, and they saw that the uninhabited Pinnacle would be an ideal location for setting up shop. They cleared out most of the rubble in the lower levels, and the doors to the basement levels were blocked off to make sure any nasty things that lived in the darkness wouldn't be able to come up and wreak havoc in the settlement. With its location on the road between New Memphis and the lands to the east, the Pinnacle became quite a busy trading hub, though not many smoothskins dared to trade with this settlement of monsters. Some bigots even went so far as to attack lone ghouls, throw rocks at the windows, and clad the walls with hateful graffiti messages, but Grutt did not want to give these people an excuse to begin an all-out assault on the Pinnacle, so he did little to chase them away, in fear of angering them. This all changed when, in 2254, a group of well-armed smoothskins came marching into the ghouls' territory. These were men from a far-away land called The Big Easy, lead by ex-crime boss Jean-Baptiste Ruechamps. These soldiers, calling themselves 'The Sluggers', wanted the large skyscraper all for themselves, as Ruechamps wanted to found his new crime empire with the Pinnacle as his throne. And so, without waiting for the ghouls' reply, they began an assault on the skyscraper. Many of the residents were killed in machine-gun fire and grenade explosions, and after a day the Pinnacle was as good as conquered. But Grutt had rallied a large number of ghouls and took them underground, to the basement, and they followed the sewers until they had arrived behind the Sluggers' main force. They then jumped out, and were able to take the enemy by surprise. The Sluggers were now attacked from two sides, as Grutt and his men came from one side, and sharpshooters were picking off their troops at the Pinnacle. Grutt even managed to take Ruechamps hostage, after which he forced his soldiers to drop their weapons and surrender. Most Sluggers did this and fled, but a small number of them was able to sneak behind the ghouls and attack Grutt in the back, freeing their leader. Ruechamps fled into the unused northern section of the Pinnacle with his troops, where they rigged the hallways and doors with explosives to deny the ghouls entrance. After this, there was peace again, as both parties got to some sort of agreement: if the ghouls stayed inside their part of the Pinnacle, everything would be fine; but if they crossed the line, Ruechamps would see himself forced to detonate his explosives, which would mean the destruction of the entire building. And since then, the life inside the Pinnacle has always been like this: a constant struggle for supremacy. Government The Pinnacle is roughly divided into two large sections which are in the hands of two different factions. The southern part is in the hands of the Mutant Pact, the name given to Grutt and his small militia of ghouls who keep the order in the settlement and protect it from any bigots and raiders that pass by. The northern part is controlled by Jean-Baptiste Ruechamps and his Sluggers. They are well-armed, and they do not tolerate any mutants on their turf. Ruechamps rules as a dictator, and while most of the Sluggers don't really like him, they follow his orders as long as they get paid. Relations New Memphis: So far, every emissary sent by the New Memphis Council has been denied access into the halls of the Sluggers. Small caravan outfits come to trade with the ghouls once in a while, but there isn't a whole lot of activity going on besides that. 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